Fic: Diploma 14/25
Title Diploma
Part 14/25
Author Internetname
Rating NC-17 (eventually)
Pairing John/Rodney
Summary Sentinel X/O: Rodney McKay and John Sheppard have figured out how to live the lives they want, and things should probably stay that way.
Warnings Slash
Word Count for Story So Far 23,029
Disclaimer Er...if they were mine they'd still be on TV.
Part One is Here
She had a strategy meeting with her linguistics team scheduled for that morning, a meeting that went long after she showed them the "wanted" photos, so it wasn't until after lunch that she managed to make her way down to the Infirmary.
Considering the high percentage of Guides and Sentinels on the expedition, the IOA had insisted that all medical personnel had experience in G/S medicine. This had turned out to be especially fortuitous when their assigned G/S expert, Dr. Bacco Ingram, had been killed during the first few weeks of the expedition by, of all things, an exploding tumor courtesy of an experimental Ancient weapon.
Though Carson Beckett's official specialty was genetics, his parents had been a G/S team, and his mother was one of those rare bonded Guides who managed to survive the death of her Sentinel - in great part, Elizabeth was sure, because of the love she had for her son. Carson spoke of her often with special fondness.
Weir stepped into the Infirmary only to stop in surprise at the sight of her chief scientist sitting on one of the beds holding an ice pack to his left elbow.
"Dr. McKay?" she asked, crossing the room in concern.
"Dr. Weir!" The man looked unsettled to see her, and before she could reach him, Dr. Beckett had scuttled to the man's side.
"Ach, Elizabeth," Carson said, putting his fingers to McKay's wrist. "Rodney here has had a wee accident."
"Yes!" McKay said. "I...fell. Hard. On my elbow."
"Will he be all right?" she asked Carson.
"Oh, aye." He looked at McKay with dark eyes. "This time."
"We're just icing it up a bit," McKay said. "Then a nurse will wrap it up, right?" He shot Weir a bright smile. "Hardly worth bothering about, really."
Now thoroughly alarmed, Weir was about to demand an explanation when Carson's warm hand curled around her arm, gently leading her further into the Infirmary and towards his office.
"Dr. Beckett -" she started in a low voice.
"Now, now," Carson said just as quietly. "Rodney says he's fallen, and we can't question that."
"But -"
"Elizabeth." He gestured for her to proceed him into his office, then uncharacteristically closed the door. "I mean we cannot ask him."
She looked at the tidy room, the closed door.
"You mean this is Guide-related?"
"Ach, aye."
Carson went to his electric kettle. "I was just about to make some tea."
Elizabeth settled into Beckett's clean white visitor's chair as best she could. In a few minutes, she was cradling a hot cup and breathing in the aromas of ginger and peach. Carson made even better tea than Teyla.
She waited until Dr. Beckett had taken his own seat, then looked into his blue eyes, noting the man looked tired.
"My best guess," he began, "and God knows it's only a guess, is that Rodney's attractiveness as a Guide is increasing with long-term exposure regardless of his deactivated state."
Her eyes widened. "So you believe a Sentinel caused..." She gestured back towards the Infirmary.
"It would be better to say I suspect it. Rodney really is the worst liar I've ever met. A lack of practice, I should think."
"But if he's being assaulted -"
"Anything we do without Rodney's express permission would constitute interference in a potential bond."
She took a sip of her tea and felt the decision come easily. "Dr. McKay is mission-essential, and he's made his feelings about bonding perfectly clear. If needed, I'm prepared to send every unbonded Sentinel back to Earth to assure his comfort."
Carson blinked at her, then took a sip of his own tea, obviously gathering his thoughts.
She ran through the list of Sentinels who might need to be reassigned. It would be a shame to lose them - except for Kavanagh, with his almost daily emails and their continuous listing of every fault, slight, and complaint that had offended his person.
"Elizabeth, the most difficult aspect of dealing with Guides and Sentinels is to understand, and truly accept, how different they are from the rest of us. They are, quite simply, genetically incomplete until they bond. Everything else, no matter how civil, how decent, how moral, takes a backseat to bonding.
"It's vital to remember that Helen of Troy was a real woman, not just a symbol of the perfect Guide. That Dahmer, Hitler, and Pol Pot all suffered bond rejection after the state deemed them unfit Sentinels. That Aileen Wuornos became a serial killer after her Sentinel was sent to jail for assaulting her."
Carson paused, looking into his tea.
"Do you know that is was a simple psychological fact in the United Kingdom that teen Guides and Sentinels were fifteen times more likely to commit suicide than their peers? Then Parliament passed the Browne/Rogers Act of 1968, preventing parents from any attempt at bond interference for children over twelve years of age, and G/S suicides virtually went down to zero. All those dead children, and from laws put in place ostensibly to protect them from statutory rape.
"Every culture on Earth has had to learn that any attempt at interference in Pride matters by an outside influence leads to disaster."
"We don't have a Pride on Atlantis."
Carson nodded sadly. "Aye."
Weir frowned. The matter was cause for celebration, as far as she was concerned. No Pride politics, no division of loyalties. What if some Alpha challenged Sheppard command, or something? Considering their perilous situation, the lack of a Pride complications was a blessing.
"Carson, I won't have Dr. McKay harassed on Atlantis."
"Dr. Weir, unless Rodney asks for assistance, there is nothing you can do."
"Can I at least speak to Teyla about it?"
Carson looked stunned. "You want to speak to Teyla about Rodney?"
"Well, even without a Pride, she's still the Alpha Guide, isn't she? And she's on Dr. McKay's team. Perhaps I could persuade her to protect him."
Dr. Beckett set his tea cup aside and rubbed at his face and eyes for several moments. He sighed, then looked up at her with all-too-knowing eyes.
"Ye cannae see him as a man, can ye?" he asked.
"Dr. McKay? Of course I can. That's my point."
"No, not Rodney. Colonel Sheppard."
With steady hands, she set down her own cup, its warmth long gone. "What do you mean?"
"I mean when you deal with him, he has to be a good soldier to you all the time, or a safely bonded Sentinel, or the ideal military commander. You can't see him as a man, as just another imperfect person doing his best to keep us all alive."
Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer. After a while, she closed it again.
But Carson just waited, letting herself get to the point to answer him honestly, even though she still didn't see how it mattered to the business at hand. She and the colonel had a fully satisfactory working relationship.
"No, I can't," she said at last. "When I look...behind the uniform, I suppose I will always see the man who killed my husband."
***
Radek Zelenka had never actually been tortured. His time in the military had been hard. The walk from his country had given him scars he could still see when he put on his socks. But no one had ever tied him to a chair and hurt him, tried personally to break him with unendurable agony.
No one until now.
By all that was holy, if he didn't manage to leave Lab Six and go laugh himself hoarse in the next five minutes, his guts were going to explode.
But every time he so much as fidgeted on his stool, lasers shot from crystal blue eyes to promise a quick and painful death.
Miko Kasanagi was trying it now, despite her earlier disaster, hovering over McKay's coffee cup to inquire if perhaps he wanted some fresh cream?
"First of all, if it's fresh, it's not cream. It's juice out of those furry pig-like things from Br!ith."
Radek admired his pronunciation. It was hard to get the "!" sound when one was talking so fast.
"Secondly, even if it were cream, I don't take cream in my coffee. And third, I would gladly drink furry pig juice in my coffee for the rest of my life if you would just leave me alone!"
The diminutive Japanese woman folded her hands over the part of her face not already obscured by black-framed glasses. Genuine tears dripped over her fingers, though she did not, Radek noted, retreat.
"Cut that out," McKay snapped. "That sort of thing doesn't work with me anymore. Sentinels can no longer cry me, laugh me, scare me, or sex me into their beds, and in this lab there will be no tears and no touching!"
This last was shouted at Kavanagh, who was walking closely behind Dr. McKay with an innocent expression on his rather ferret-like face.
"Rodney," he said.
"That's Dr. McKay to you!"
"Surely you can see you're being unreasonable and putting an undue strain on the Sentinel population of the city."
"There would be no strain if you would leave me alone. Can't you people tell I'm not functional?"
Kavanagh nodded. "Of course, which is why there is an obvious solution to the problem you have not seen, probably because you are too close to the issue. Guides often are unable to see their own situations, something the law used to recognize."
McKay's mouth opened and closed a few times.
Kavanagh removed his glasses to polish them as he continued. "If you would simply deactivate the device and allow the Sentinels on the base to determine possible compatibility, those who find you unsuitable would no longer pursue you for a bond, and you would probably end up finding your bondmate. Perhaps a fellow scientist." The man whipped out what he doubtlessly thought a winning smile.
"The crystal could be deactivated without removal?" Miko squeaked in excitement.
"Yes, I have been working on some figures -"
"That is ENOUGH!" McKay thundered, and if his Voice were active, no doubt every unbonded Sentinel on Atlantis would be cowering in a corner. Maybe the bonded ones too. As it was, everyone in the lab had stopped to stare at him.
"I don't care what sort of bond-lust you people have, and I don't need to care. I am still the Chief of Science and Research on this base, and I will see to it that you are returned to Earth within the hour if you not leave this lab this instant."
Miko scurried from the room. Kavanagh nodded and sauntered out. McKay glared at Dr. Gaul - poised to swoop down with the latest report from Stellar Cartography on his laptop and a rather large bar of chocolate sticking out of his pocket - until the man's shoulder's slumped and he quietly retreated.
McKay glared briefly at the rest of the room, then turned to his laptop to stab at the keys with his good arm.
"You know," Radek suggested. "You could ask Colonel Sheppard for security escort."
"Bite me."
"I am sure he could find many strong Marines to protect you from female Sentinels wielding furry pig juice and epic love poetry."
Rodney winced, his right hand cupping his left elbow.
"Dr. McKay?" asked a fresh-faced private from the doorway. Everyone looked over at the pretty young woman holding a small box of darkened control crystals in her hands. Her nametag read Pei.
"I brought these down to you from the control room."
"I asked Dr. Graden for those," McKay said.
"Grodin," Zelenka murmured.
Private Pei flashed a brilliant smile. "Oh, I told him I didn't mind. I mean, it was no trouble at all." She walked towards McKay with the box as though conveying a holy relic to the high priest.
Braving the Blue Glare of Death, Radek snapped his laptop closed and hurried from the room muttering nonsense in Czech. With effort, he made it into the transporter just in time.
***
Part Fifteen is Here